Letters, yeh

What I enjoy as far as writing and reading are concerned is letters.  How’s that for a probably grammatically incorrect sentence?  But that’s the thing about letters, they are a free-form creative writing experience.  My aforementioned schizophrenic-diagnosed cousin is the only person these days who I receive actual letters from on a regular basis.  He doesn’t wax schizophrenic in his letters except once in a while.  Usually he makes positive comments (“I love you very much, David!” “God bless you and your brothers and families!”) with a few current events in his life thrown in, in about a half-page letter.  He has a good memory, and when my brother Jeff and I visited him last weekend at Van Buren Health & Rehab (danged big place) one thing he asked about was who was in the auto accident in Missouri.  That would be Jeff, in 1976, when he was returning with a friend for a visit to Westminster College, from which he'd graduated the previous year. (Jeff’s spleen was removed, but before the surgery was done, it was touch-and-go because of internal bleeding and  Jeff had to be airlifted from a small town hospital to Springfield.  Jeff and I were living together in Little Rock at the time, but that night I was staying in Pine Bluff with two of my younger brothers when the small-town doctor called, asking for Jeff’s father.  For some reason, maybe the tone of the man’s voice, I said I was Jeff’s father.  The doctor was pissed when he found he’d told the info to Jeff’s brother, but I told him I’d get my parents, which I promptly did.  They were at an annual Charity Ball on Main Street, in that era when such things still took place in Pine Bluff.)

But the point here is, (Jeff's friend wasn't seriously injured, by the way) what I’m interested in is at least one person to correspond with.  More than one would be fine.  Yeh, I mean e-mail, not actual handwritten letters, although that is what I really like to write and receive. This thing of having comments made and responded to in the public way of the normal blog, no thanks, not for me.  I'm an inveterate letter writer--that's about all my fragmented mind can concentrate on.  Well I did finish a short story recently, after...eight years.  Have a good Memorial Day.

(note added in proof:  yes, I do exchange e-mail with family and friends, but except for a few good ones such as Pat's below, they are pretty much utilitarian.  and on the other hand, i'll have to say some people, including me sometimes, can write blog posts that are very creative-literary-letter-like.  i even fantasize on occasion that some such other people were thinking of me in some way.  that's like a fantasy letter substitute for the real thing, I guess. )

Ghost(s) at the Saenger Theater

The Saenger Theater in Pine Bluff, built in 1924, has been mentioned in the statewide newspaper lately because the building is deteriorating and needs its roof repaired to the tune of $150,000 to prevent its imminent demolition.  This news comes at the same time a historic building in Morrilton that was still in use collapsed this week, killing a two year old girl and seriously injuring her mother. (Unlike that building, the Saenger is not still in use.)  The statewide paper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, reminisced in an editorial today on the heyday of the Saenger and lamented that it has not been restored like one of its sister theaters in Texarkana (it was a Saenger theater also, but is now the Perot Theater, due to Ross Perot putting up a million dollars to help get the theater restored).  The Pine Bluff Saenger was close to being restored eight or ten years ago, when a Pine Bluff film festival was still in existence, but has since further deteriorated.

Anyway, today's editorial didn't mention the legend of the ghost in the theater.  Supposedly an electrician was electrocuted while working overtime in order to get the final connections made for the theater to open.  Also supposedly, his wife was waiting outside in their car so they could leave immediately for a vacation.  This would not mean much at all to me, except for the fact that my best male friend in junior high and high school, Pat  Calkins, worked as the Saenger's assistant manager for several years and has told me he saw the ghost.  He's not one to make up something like that.  The cleaning ladies also told him they'd seen this ghost.  Apparently, strange noises were common in the theater late at night, but sightings of the ghost were not.

Last year I asked Pat to tell me about his sighting of the ghost and to provide if he could any leads I might follow relating to other people having seen it.  I was thinking of writing it up as an article for the Jefferson County Historical Quarterly.  Pat is a word person, but not so much a sentence or punctuation person.  Here is his email to me about the ghost:

Maybe Commonwealth Theaters  could check old employee files and find the old gals. what I saw , Every night after everyone had left the theater The Projectionist Zappy turned on the auditorium light and left I locked all the doors leaving my keys in the lock on the front door next to the boxofice then same routine as always I walk through the foyer taking a look in the auditorium for sleepers lovers drunks then hit the light switch under the stairs that led to the balcony , but that night I saw a figure coming up the isle I stopped looked and it was the ghost he was wearing a smock and carrying a tool box as if he was simply on the way out. It shocked the piss out of me I ran to the door unlocked it stopped out locked it back jumped in the old Flag car drove off with tears in my eyes checking the back seat. The next Coke Show I asked one of the maids if they ever saw anything unusual in there and she grabed my arm and said you seen him didn't you then started laughing and said look at those goose bumps I'll tell you exactly what you seen ,describing him exactly followed byhow he got there and he didn't bother anybody like the mean one up in the balcony . I'm running out of library time so so long adju to you  Pat

Anti-Social Network, no aneurysm detected, light

I started an Anti-Social Network some months ago.  So far it's been very successful!  No one at all has signed up.

This very blog which you are reading by some set of unlikely circumstances or perhaps accidentally is rather anti-social itself.  No comments allowed for all to see and perhaps for some even to further comment upon.  "Send him an email, huh!" you say. "That  a-social a-hole, who'd bother?"  Ha.  One significant person is all I'm fishin' for.  Yep, statistics are against me (only out of many comments, procured by being widely read, says statistics, would you likely encounter that significant one).  But if someone likes his life like it is, why should he cast his net upon the statistical muddied waters?

I've also kept a journal for thirty years.  Compare that!  Not even available to be read by anybody.  Not until I publish parts of it, if I ever do.

My brother and his family in Birmingham & Tuscaloosa, from whence I received my current best friend, Jessie, are fine, thanks

Me too.  I actually imagined I possibly had an abdominable aortal aneurism, like Dr. Einstein did, but by a convoluted set of circumstances and in the end by no doing or asking on my part (3rd time was charm), I was checked via sonography for that ailment and others on Tuesday at my gastroenterologist's office, and was sent away with a clean bill of health.  No, he didn't do the test himself, like the MD giving the chest X-rays does in A Serious Man. 

What is light, or a better question would be how is light that we see generated, and what kind of properties does it have?  We get into statistics in answering those questions.  Spontaneous emission and stimulated emission (of light from atoms) are the ways it's generated.  But it's also scattered by "objects," meaning all the things we see that are not sources of light.  Light from the sun or from an incandescent or fluorescent lamp, or from this screen you're reading, is nearly all generated by spontaneous emission.  Laser light is almost all generated by stimulated emission (thus Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation is where it gets its name).  The statistics of "counting photons" in different types of light is what we will stumble into next time.  Oh, yes and also eventually the all-important concept of superposition in quantum mechanics and its role in Schroedinger's Cat and the EPR problem.

Back to my booth at the Pine Bluff Business Expo for now.  Peace.